Sticks and Stones - Part 3 of 3

 

Photo by Dylan Hunter on Unsplash

3

Reluctantly, Christoffer started for the dumpster and climbed into it without looking back. And then, for a long time, nothing happened. He must’ve stayed in the container for several minutes when he finally dared to lift the lid and stick his head out, at which point, it had become dawn and the sky was painted in the shades of twilight.

Neither Betül nor Farouk was around when he climbed out, stinking worse than he could smell. But their absence was not the only perplexing thing. All around him, scattered at random, were what he could only call human body parts in all shapes and colours, as well as different stages of decay. Even the soil beneath his feet was full of bits of flesh here and there, sticking to his shoes like glue.

But before he could wrap his head around what had happened during those hours he stayed hidden in the container, he staggered back only for something to get caught underfoot, something that he immediately recognised upon picking up. It was a stone, one that belonged to Farouk. But what was it doing here?

He retraced his steps back to his apartment, taking in the bloody carnage all around him but unable to make sense of it. But the worst had yet to come, only he didn’t know then. When he finally arrived at the third-floor landing, the door to his apartment gave way without resistance and unlocked. Inside… nothing. Only traces of blood – a lot of it – on the striped wallpapers, on the floorboards that had become swollen. Neither his mum nor Reila was around, though. In their stead, something else was.

In the kitchen was a large pot bubbling away. As he crept closer, each step warier than the last, he lifted the shaking lid and came face-to-face with a stew made of human body parts. One of the severed fingers had a ring on it, one his mum had been gifted by his deceased father and never took off. This realisation made him stagger back, and his breath became shallow and laboured, and that was exactly when the living room door slammed shut with a deafening bang across the kitchen.

He whipped around and sprinted out the gaping front door, not looking back even once, not until he made it safely out of his apartment and was back outside. When he looked up at the third floor, however, a faceless shape waved at him from the kitchen window, and he fled that instant, springing wherever his feet took him. Once he came back to his senses, he was back at the site of the dumpster, or rather, back inside it, counting the seconds, wishing upon the stars for a miracle that this was only a nightmare and that he would soon wake up from it.

Once nighttime came, however, nothing changed. Stuck in a bad dream with nowhere to go, he climbed out and picked up more stones on the damp soul, and as if to keep himself from losing his senses completely, began to play by himself like a madman.

He must’ve played for several hours by the time he noticed the approaching footsteps and quickly hid back inside the container. Through a small gap, he saw the homeless people returning, each one of them chewing on a human body part. They settled at the dumpster site and drank all night, oblivious to his presence, and when morning came, they left.

This repeated for a few more nights, with the homeless people returning to the container with human body parts and then leaving only to return the next night. One morning, however, instead of waiting in dread for dusk to come, Christoffer decided to follow the homeless people who seemed to be unaware of him, no matter how much noise he made.

They wound up a dark pathway through an empty field or some kind of overgrown pasture no longer used and kept walking for hours on end without respite. And when darkness fell once more, the pathway came full circle, and they were back at the site of the dumpster, only now Christoffer knew where the source of all those human body parts came from.

During this nocturnal walk with no aim or purpose, the homeless people picked up wooden sticks now and then, and by the time night came, those sticks became human body parts. But the homeless people weren’t even aware of this, for they were far gone and unsound of mind to think straight and get back to their senses to realise they were caught in a loop of some kind, reliving the same day over and over, and somehow, he had ended up in that loop, too.

By the second week, he decided to pick up some sticks himself to quench his growing hunger, and although the sticks tasted weird and gamey, like rotten flesh, he did not mind since he knew the sticks were anything but human. The taste even grew on him after the fourth fortnight, and he ended up joining the homeless people, who did not mind him following them around and mimicking them.

Then, one night, as they were having a feast by the fire, something that had never happened happened. One of the homeless people turned to him as they were about to get back on their feet and follow the dark pathway till dusk. This was the first time they ever talked or acknowledged him, as if mimicking them had somehow allowed him to become visible again.

“You stay here, climb the container.”

And so he did.

When morning came, he climbed out only to find himself back in the normal world, no longer bound by the time loop. But several years had passed since then, although he had stayed the same age as when he disappeared. Everyone he knew had long since either passed away or moved to another place – everyone save his good friends Betül and Farouk, who had grown grey and as old as the hills.

They recognised him immediately, although it took him a second to recognise them. None of them could explain what had happened that night, only that he disappeared after climbing into that dumpster. Betül had told the police what had happened, but the police refused to believe her story, and so he was registered into the system as another runaway. When they asked what exactly had happened during the time he was away, he couldn’t tell the truth – or rather – the whole truth.

The two of them passed away not long after this fated reunion, dying almost a week after one another. The entire neighbourhood was in mourning during the funeral, and Christoffer had attended it with those stones that Farouk always carried with him, the ones he found in the nightmarish loop. But as he was paying his respects to his two friends, he heard a familiar rustle in the clump of bushes near the Muslim cemetery, and he decided to take a look at what it was.

There, hiding in the bushes, were some wooden sticks arranged in a neat circle. Without realising it, he picked some up and started chewing, slowly making his way back to the funeral attended by the whole neighbourhood. When they saw him approach, they gasped collectively and pointed fingers at him. When he looked down at the stick, it had turned into a human leg dripping with fresh blood.

Then… a chilling scream.

A woman rushed from the clump of bushes with a child in her arms, one of its legs missing. When she saw him, with his teeth still dug into the tender flesh, she let out another bloodcurdling scream, and before he knew it, the people around him tackled him to the ground and kept him there until the police arrived. When the police asked for his name, he gave them the one his parents gave him, but they wouldn’t believe him, saying he couldn’t have stayed this young after all those years.

Now he was locked up in an asylum, counting the days. His psychiatrist said he had been cured of his illness and that he would be able to return to normalcy once the related paperwork had been sent off to court. In the meantime, to kill some time, he played stones by himself and occasionally chewed on his own arms to satisfy his hunger. Once he returned home, the first thing he would do was to climb into the dumpster. That way, only a child stupid enough to come near a place like that would go missing, and the police would write them off as simple runaway cases.

Sticks and Stones - Part 2 of 3

 

Photo by Foad Roshan on Unsplash

2

“Argh! I told you guys to listen to me! My mum’s going to kill me!”

Betül and Christoffer locked eyes, both apologetic, as Farouk crouched down in defeat and looked devastated as the phone kept ringing in the background. He lived two blocks away from themand would have to walk for several minutes in the gloom to get home.

Also, everyone in their neighbourhood knew that his mum was really strict. She had become so after having lost her husband in a work-related accident seven years ago, and so they feared that she might actually thrash Farouk as a form of discipline for not returning home in time to take his epilepsy pills.

Christoffer, “Hey, don’t beat yourself up too much, dude. You can just stay over at my place, and I’ll have my mum call yours, say that you had a seizure and couldn’t make it home?”

Farouk looked up with misty, bloodshot eyes.

“Then she’ll only get more upset!”

“No, I think Chris has a point. Would you rather she thinks you’ve spent the night at the playground?”

“Of course not! Are you mad!? She’ll kill me if—”

“Then, it is decided,” she said, gesturing at Christoffer. “Hey, lend me a hand and let’s bring this idiot to your place.”

“What about you?” Christoffer said as they each wrapped an arm around Farouk, who was still quite out of it to even lift a finger or move on his own.

“I’ll be fine. My apartment’s not too far from your place.”

“No, I meant, like, won’t your parents, I don’t know, say something?”

“My parents? No, why would they? It’s not like it’s the first time,” she said, changing the subject before he could inquire further. “You had a little sister, right? What was her name, again?”

“Reila,” he said, adding, “she’s not really my sister, though.”

“How so?”

“My mum remarried when I was a toddler to some Japanese guy, who dated her for the green card and then, yeah…”

“Oh, I see. But I thought you two looked pretty close the other day.”

“The other day?” Christoffer repeated, adjusting his grip on Farouk, who was dragging his feet through the pavement with a hollow look on his face as if his whole world had shattered and fallen apart right in front of him.

“Yeah, at the supermarket. You know, the one near the gas station.”

“Ah, right! Yeah, Mum brought us along grocery shopping, but I wouldn’t say we’re that close.”

“Really? Why not, though? You guys must’ve basically grown up together, like real siblings, no?”

“Reila can be… difficult, sometimes, you know?”

“Difficult? Like to elaborate on that one? How difficult can she even be for you to say this?”

“Hard to explain… Not sure where to start…”

“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought you looked close, but—”

“It’s just that she creeps me up, sometimes. Especially as of late. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s older or her teenage hormones acting up, but…”

“But?”

Christoffer cast a look at Farouk as if to make sure the other was too lost in his own misery to pay attention to their conversation.

“It’s like she’s possessed. I keep seeing her wake up at night, going through the entire fridge. Mum thinks I’m the one doing that and won’t believe me.”

“And your step-dad?”

“He’s, uh, not around anymore. Been dead for two years already.”

“Oh, sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t know…”

“Don’t be.”

“And you and your mum’ve been taking care of her all this time?”

“Yeah…”

“Wow, I’m not sure my mum would do that,” she said matter-of-factly before suddenly coming to a halt and seeking his confused eyes. “Hey, did you just say she was going through your fridge every night?”

“…Yeah, why?”

“So, basically, she’s hungrier than usual? Right?”

“I’m not following.”

Betül let go of Farouk and helped him settle on a wooden fence, which only reached to their ankles at either side of the pavement.

“Lamia! She must’ve been possessed by her!”

“I said she was going through the fridge, not eating children, dude.”

“Yeah, so what? Maybe that’s just how it begins? And then, when the hunger grows, she might—”

“Betül! Hemen buraya gel!”

They both turned in the direction of the kiosk just around the corner, where the silhouette of a dumpy woman with a hijab made some angry gestures at Betül. It sounded like her mum, it even looked like her from this angle, but why was her face completely swallowed by the darkness? Not to mention the way she moved her arms seemed so… stiff? Unnatural, even.

“Is that your mum?”

“I…”

“Betül!”

“Hey, you okay?” Christoffer said. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Huh? No, I’m… I’m fine. I’m just… confused.”

“Confused?”

As she was about to reveal what was going through her mind, Farouk suddenly rose to his feet between them. In a trance, he then pointed in the direction of the corner where the silhouette was, before going into a seizure with his eyes rolled back into the sockets. They barely caught him in time, and when the worst of the convulsions were over, the silhouette in the corner was gone, too.

“What… what was that?” Christoffer managed, his voice cracking. “Hey, talking to you, Betül! What the heck just happened?”

“I’m not—”

She never finished her sentence, or rather, could not. A nauseating odour arose from the kiosk, right at that shadowy corner, the smell a cross between charred flesh and the sweet and greasy smell of swine mingling. Then, that voice came again, this time from somewhere behind them, and Farouk went into another seizure.

“Gel! Gel! Gel!”

Behind them was nothing but darkness and several apartments lined up on one side. But not for long. Through the shadows, where the eyes could not penetrate at nighttime, several figures emerged, their chilling voices repeating like a broken record the same words over and over again.

“What do they say? Betül!”

“Come,” She met his bewildered gaze, just as fraught with dread as her own. “They are telling us to come.”

“Come? Come where?”

“I-I don’t know! How would I—”

“Reila?”

Betül followed his eyes back to the strange figures moving closer and closer to them by the second, and that was when she saw the girl she had seen at the supermarket the other day. But like her own mum, the girl’s features were hardly visible in the gloom, as if her entire body had been drowned in a sea of shadows and become one with the darkness.

And as Christoffer was about to rush towards her, Betül seized his arm. “What are you doing? Can’t you see it’s not her?”

“…What?”

“Look at them, look carefully! See, Farouk’s there too! But he’s here, isn’t he? Whatever these people are, they are mimicking people we know, trying to lure us closer!”

“How is… how is this even possible? What’s going on?”

Betül, on full alert, “Now’s not the time for asking questions! If we don’t move any time soon, we might not make it!”

“Make it?”

“Listen,” she said, “we have to hide. And that quick!”

“But where? Look at him.” Christoffer gestured at Farouk, who had finally stopped convulsing but was still unconscious. “Does it look like he can move to you?”

“Who said we’re bringing him with us?”

“Uh—what?”

“Quick! Hide in that dumpster over there! Hurry!”

Christoffer followed her gaze to the corner and arched his brows.

“Isn’t that where those homeless—”

“Stop asking questions and just go! Hurry!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll try to distract them! Now go! Go, Chris! Go!”

Sticks and Stones - Part 1 of 3

 

Photo by Luca Maffeis on Unsplash

1

”No! You missed it, dude!” Farouk snapped as the huge piece of stone failed to hit the smaller ones lined up on the sandy ground, rising to his feet from where he was crouched and utterly devastated that his team was losing. Again. “How can you even miss it twice in a row!?”

Betül rolled her eyes before picking up the carefully chosen stone with the uneven edges, one she had successfully used over the course of a year without once missing the mark. That is, until today. She couldn’t say what it was, but something felt off. Whether it was the overcast weather, the increasingly darkening sky, or just something innately inside her, she did not know, but whatever it was, it made her skin crawl and mouth run dry like her whole mouth was made of sandpaper.

Christoffer, on the other hand, was a team of his own and older than them by a year. He celebrated his miraculous win with his signature gesture, shaking his shoulders in an Egyptian dance and making loud noises to annoy Farouk on purpose – going as far as turning his back to them and shaking his butt like a real Arabian belly dancer.

“Woohoo! Losers!” he said, making a huge ‘L’ with his hand, before extending his hand. “Now give me everything you stole!”

Farouk, cheesed off, “Stole!? We won it fair and square, you little—”

“Hey, easy, you two! And you,” Betül said with a firm voice as she turned to face Farouk. “Give the guy back his stones and shut it.”

“Uh… what’s with her?” Christoffer mumbled.

“Do I look like I know?” Farouk said. “Here, these were yours, right?”

Christoffer studied each piece of stone as if it were a jewel. Farouk had fetched from his pockets a full of valuables and picked up three jagged stones seemingly at random. It was a mystery how those huge stones even fit into his pocket, not to mention on top of all those smaller ones in there, too.

“Yeah, seems like it,” Christoffer said, placing the stones inside his folded shirt since he did not have pockets of his own. “When on earth did you even win all those stones? You have no social life or something? No school?”

Farouk lifted his head with a proud smile, so much in fact that Betül thought for a brief moment that his crooked nose would stay suspended mid-air and wanted to smack him back to his senses. But she didn’t do that, of course.

“Dude, like, who do you think I am? I am the Farouk!” he said. “I always have time for victory!”

“Victory?” Betül repeated, her tone laced with sarcasm. “More like defeat! Besides today, have you ever truly won without my help? Like ever?”

Farouk met her sarcasm head-on, his eyes narrowing and lips curling into a pout. “You’re seriously going to live as if stuck in the past? What matters,” he said, grinning wide, “is what we win today, in the present. Which means, I win. Not you, sor-ry!”

“You’re so dumb, you know that?”

“Who you calling dumb!?”

As the two teammates were about to clash and get into a huge fight, one in which Betül would emerge as the winner since she was larger in build than Farouk, who hardly had any meat on him, Christoffer nimbly intervened and separated them before they could start throwing punches.

“Yo, calm down, you two! Hey, you guys hear me!? Geez! Stop it! Both of you!”

Betül ran a hand down her hair as she was the first to retreat, before Farouk too calmed down enough for Christoffer to stop holding him back. “You guys are craaaazy. How did you even end up being friends?”

“Friends? More like enemies!” Betül said, adding. “I recruited this idiot after seeing him win once, and then he just kept losing ever since!”

“You mean twice! I won twice!”

“Dude,” Betül exclaimed as she realised what he was referring to. “Winning against those homeless people… you call that a win? Like, seriously!?”

“Well, you didn’t dare, remember?”

“Yeah, but only because they are homeless, duh!” she said, adding in one single breath before he could interrupt, “and don’t act like you don’t know the rumours, you idiot!”

“What rumours?” said Christoffer.

“Don’t mind her, they’re just rumours!” said Farouk. “See! Nothing bad happened to me!”

“Just because it didn’t happen that one time, doesn’t mean it won’t happen ever! Just how stupid can you even be?”

Farouk glared, rolling up his sleeves to throw another future punch when Christoffer interrupted. “Hey, guys, what rumours?”

Betül and Farouk both turned to Christoffer at the same time as he was about to repeat himself, both of them seeing red and too furious to explain stuff to him. “SHUT IT!”

“Uh, what?” Christoffer said, the tone of his voice giving away just how offended he was at being shouted at out of nowhere. “You guys… got some loose screws or something? Dude, I was just asking.”

Betül, now a tad calmer. “You haven’t heard the rumours? Is that it?”

“Why would I ask if I knew?”

Betül then exchanged a knowing look with Farouk before gesturing each of them to come closer, so that they hunched down in a tight circle of three.

“I’m not sure where the rumours come from or who spread them,” she whispered, dragging each word on purpose to get her words across. “But I don’t doubt them. Not even for a second.”

Farouk, “Me neither.”

Christoffer, utterly confused, arched his brows low and whispered, “What do you mean? You’ve… seen something?”

Betül drew a deep breath before finally speaking, letting her brown eyes sweep over the two boys for the briefest of moments as if to prepare them for what she was about to reveal.

“I was walking home from school one day two years ago. My sister was sick, so this was my first day going home on my own, and as you both know, our apartment is right around that dumpster those homeless people hang out at, drinking and pissing all over themselves. Like, ew, so, so disgusting… Anyway, so I was walking home, and then I felt something strange, like someone watching me. So, I looked around…” She paused, letting the silence stretch on for a tad longer than either of the boys wanted. “And, then I saw one of those people was staring straight at me!”

“W-What happened next?” Farouk croaked.

“Then he waved me over, of course!”

“And did you?” asked Christoffer.

Betül broke the tight circle. “Of course I didn’t, idiot! If I did, would I be here, you think?”

“I don’t get it. What’s this whole rumour thing, then? To me, it just looks like the guy wanted to chat or something…”

“It hasn’t been long since you moved here, right?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s been about four months or so. Why do you ask?”

Farouk, “There was this girl, let’s call her Ida for convenience. One day, as she was walking home from school, she disappeared. Just like that! The whole neighbourhood tried to find her, but when night came, she was reported missing to the police. According to the rumours, someone saw her talk to one of those homeless people before she vanished!”

“She was… never found?”

“No,” Betül said, “she wasn’t! The police wrote off her case as a typical runaway, but the poor girl was only eight years old when she went off the radar, only two or so years younger than what we are today.”

“You think… there’s some truth in those rumours, then?”

“Of course!”

“But didn’t you,” Christoffer turned to face Farouk, “just say that you played and won against those homeless people? If the rumours were true, then you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“Yeah, but I was not by myself! All the neighbourhood kids were there too! Just imagine if I’d been there all alone?” Farouk shivered at the thought. “I’d be long dead!”

“Still, something doesn’t add up. Maybe the police are right? Maybe she just—”

“An eight-year-old runaway?” said Betül, adding before he could protest. “Come on, dude! Get real! No kid that age runs away, unless…” Betül gestured them to come closer again, closing the circle, “…something else happened to her.”

“Like what…” Christoffer said, his voice cracking from the growing dread in the air around them. “…exactly?”

“You two ever heard the story of ‘Lamia’?”

“Lami—what?” said Farouk, who was getting increasingly unsettled by the stuff they were discussing as the sun fell below the horizon every passing second in the background, casting the entire playground in deep shadows.

“It’s originally a story from Greek mythology, one only a few know, and luckily for you two, I’m one of those people in the know…”

“So?” said Christoffer. “What’s the story about?”

“Okay, so there was this super pretty queen named Lamia, and Zeus, the king of the gods, liked her – like, liked liked her – and his wife, Hera, got soooo mad. She was jealous and made Lamia go totally nuts! She took away her kids and made her into this scary children-eating monster!”

“Children…”—Farouk, peeking over his shoulder at once as if something had moved in the deepening shadows and crept closer to them—“…eating monster?”

“And get this, you two,” she continued without missing a beat. “Lamia could never close her eyes, like ever, so she just wandered around all night, looking creepy and sad and angry. Then she started stealing kids from their beds, and she’d eat them! Eat them all!”

As she said the last sentence, she raised her voice on purpose, and Farouk almost had a heart attack as he jolted up with a gasp and took shelter behind Christoffer. Christoffer, although equally scared, tried to play it cool.

 “What a stupid story. Why would a monster from Greek mythology even be here, in our neighbourhood? Stop making up stuff just to scare Farouk—”

“But I’m not making any of this up!” she interjected.

“Everyone knows you’re a bookworm,” Christoffer said. “You’re just telling us stories you’ve read! Anyone can see that, so stop pretending!”

Betül, “I didn’t read about it anywhere! I swear! I heard it from someone!”

“Really? Like from whom? Come on, go ahead. Tell us!”

Farouk, sensing the growing tension between those two, with his weak and antsy voice, then tried to intervene. “Hey, uh, maybe we should go home now? It’s getting dark and—”

“I-I promised not to snitch!”

“Promised!?” snapped Christoffer. “Since when do you keep your promises?”

“Are you saying I don’t?”

“Just admit it, Betül! You’re just making stuff up to scare us!”

“I already told you—”

“Guys, listen to me, it’s getting really dark and—”

“Shut up!” they both said in sync.

And for a while, the heated conversation continued back and forth with neither of the two backing off or throwing in the towel, not until the streetlights on the playground turned on and they found themselves way past their curfew, at which point it was too late to rue the day because Farouk’s phone now rang and pulled the three friends back to reality.

Muse

Photo by Sai on Unsplash

The house lights faded first in the vaulted concert hall, so that rows of shadowed faces stretched beyond the reach of the spotlight, even the ceiling arched so high that the dim glow failed to touch its darkened curves, causing a stir in the upper balconies where the sudden hush, like one single exhale, revealed that each seat was full and anticipation running high.

Both the fill and key lights came alive above the majestic stage not long after, followed closely by the backlights catching the polished black lid of the Steinway concert grand. Two footlights along the platform’s edge kept just enough glow for safe footing, the soft colours creating shallow shades along the stage as Francisco approached the centre of the podium.

Hypnotised eyes traced his every move, the way his breath fogged beneath the intense backlights as he took his designated seat at the grand piano. With his slender fingers hovering above the black and white keys, a moment of absolute silence hung in the air. Then, as he flexed his wrists once, in E‑flat minor, he struck the first chord of Samuel Barber’s Sonata.

The action of the hammer danced beneath the enthralling sound, the immediate mechanical click lost beneath the sonata’s brutality, and notes shattered into the air in dissonant clusters that lingered too long, bending back from somewhere high in the deepening shadows where the stage lightning could not reach.

When the Adagio’s slow ostinato began, his fingers pressed softer, sinking deep into the weighted keys, and the haunting melody bent again, before collapsing into the opening of the finale. His hands moved faster now, crossing and twisting in all directions as the grand piano growled and shrieked in four different tones, creating a hauntingly beautiful harmony.

Then… silence. The striking notes came to an end as thousands breathed out as one, gasping, captivated by the melancholy sonata and lost in its remarkable and tender melodies that ended far too soon, far too suddenly.

And the world tilted on its axis.

Francisco lifted his hands off the keys, and the cameras pulled back and tilted the frame so that they captured a distorted version of the concert hall and the thousands of attendees, who secured seats at great expense to witness the craft of his otherworldly artistry as a famed pianist, whose renown stretched far and wide, across the globe. A living legend, a black sheep in the dwindling industry slowly losing its soul, bringing back the golden days of the classics with his talents.

But as the cameras lingered on his inverted form, recording the chiselled features of his face under the dimness and shrewd angle, he carried a secret so great that should the word spread, he might never recover from it, and the ladder be ripped out from under him before he even reached the top.

Greeting the audience, bowing just low enough to make it look like he cared about them, he raised his head and let his eyes settle on the clapping audience clad in elegant costumes made from the finest fabric to ever exist. But it was not those superficial details that caught his attention this very second.

As the sea of bewitched attendees fought to meet his gaze, the stage lights gradually switched on, and his eyes settled on a young woman who wasn’t supposed to be there. Garbed in a black evening dress, she wore a smile on her china face, one that grew wider by the second until it turned into a grotesque rictus – something in between a grin and a scream cut short. Too short, in his opinion.

When he straightened his spine, she was gone, and in place of her remained an empty seat with white lilies on top, and from the petals dripped fresh blood. A smirk tugged at his lips as he saw the crimson liquid, reliving the moment his muse sacrificed her body and soul for him, going so far as to become his – truly his – just to see him grow into his full potential, or rather, die thinking her selfless contribution added something to this mundane world.

But she wasn’t the only one who had these unhealthy ideas, not the only muse he had and would continue to have for as long as his secret remained hidden from plain sight.

People of all sexes and walks of life sought him out, some as genuine fans of what he represented or thought he did, while others were slaves to their sexual desires, hankering for his flesh as if it were the forbidden fruit itself, unable to resist the sweetness. But what was so bad about Eden’s fruit? Wasn’t it the beginning of humanity as it is, or perhaps, the moment humanity’s story began to unravel because it fell apart first?

Without the darkness we each carry deep in the chambers of our blackened hearts, what purpose would light serve? In the end, light was created as a response to this vast darkness and the weight of that morbidity within it, hiding in plain sight but never truly seen, not until it was brought back into our lives one way or the other – sometimes – on purpose, even.

And just as light needed darkness to thrive, a harmless and necessary agreement, so too was the pact Francisco made with his victims. He gave them what they wanted in return for something far greater, turning each one of them into his muses and keeping them alive in his memories and celebrated magnum opuses. Such was indeed the secret he carried, and not a single day passed without him honouring them, as he relived their final sacrifices each night before stepping onto yet another sold-out stage.

With the cheers reaching a disturbing crescendo and the concert hall trembling beneath the weight of the audience’s fervent applause, Francisco slipped away from the podium, and his shrewd, upside-down shadow stretched long and restless into the growing darkness beyond the stage lights.

 

Femgore Review

Photo by Catalin Pop on Unsplash

I can’t understand females despite being one myself. Sure, you’ve got a kid to take care of and all that, but why endure being beaten black and blue when you can just… feed your abusive partner some pills?

I can’t understand how somebody can be so stupid when ending the misery is so easy. So easy that I can’t phantom why anybody would rather endure the pain and agony than fight back in the most perfect way there is?

Or when you’re raped and lying next to your rapist, why not just take a knife and stab them when they least expect it? It’s so easy that I can’t understand why no female ever does it, why they choose to endure rather than to end it.

I’m no sexist, yet sometimes the very stupidity of my sex gets me worked up in ways no words can truly capture. At the same time, I perceive myself as a feminist at heart, for I’d rather see my sex fight the oppression and the abuse by giving right back to their abusers than stay idle, yet they rarely do.

That lack of action actually made me distance myself from my peers. Like, seriously, you’re just going to get raped and do nothing about it? Your kids? Your poor, poor kids? Well, aren’t they better off at some random orphanage than learning how to treat other people from that partner of yours?

But those kinds of things aren’t even the tip of my disturbing opinions about females and the growing trend of embracing masculinity, which is all about showing similar and violent tendencies as the very sex that puts them in so much misery.

Like, seriously? You think you have what it takes to take on an average man with that build of yours? Sure, steroids will help you get those muscles to look way larger than they are, but are they actually making you strong enough to fight back a man with natural levels of testosterone?

I’m not a man, but I think the answer to this question is pretty obvious, and yet… Nowadays, female authors seem to give my sex the false hope that we can take on an average man with ease, abuse them, and show just as much brutality towards them, as they have shown to us for ages. But just how detached from reality must someone be to actually believe this crap?

I’m not talking about transgenders but cis-people, by the way, even though when the transition has begun plays a subtle part here, like the density of the bone, the levels of testosterone before it was suppressed, and so on. Anyway, so what I am trying to say is that… I’m going to prove them all wrong.

Getting raped? Easy! As long as you have a hole somewhere, there will be dogs barking up across the country. What is hard, the hardest part in fact, is to turn the dog into a bitch and make it howl while you, as the female in this situation, make it immobile, cut off its testicles, and then grind the flesh with a proud smile.

Really, the only realistic way to do all that is to, well, knock out your rapist with a blunt object when they’ve finished their thing or, surprise, feed them some pills. But that would be too easy and wouldn’t prove the theory of how women are capable of doing exactly the same things to their abusers as they have done to them.

So, what do you do in that scenario? Well, the best outcome would be to physically fight off the rapist and then go from there. So… that’s what I decided to do.

Did it work? It did not. But I’m here, writing this, so something must’ve gone right… right? The thing is, I just did what any sensible female would in such a predicament: I tore my abuser’s ear off and then chewed on his nose. A tad too salty and metallic in taste, not to mention the acidic aftertaste of the byproducts produced by bacteria on the skin tissue. Yikes! Why do men never shower?

Overall, this method was a very unfortunate 3/10 – would not recommend. For my next attempt, if I ever should decide to push the limits, I’d definitely prepare more beforehand in case something goes astray during the review itself. And, well, I’d also practise my cutting skills so that the body parts are grounded to perfection before dumping them down the drain.

Also, for my next article, I’m open to new recommendations. So try your worst, and I’ll see you next time in another abysmal review!

Important notice: the procedures outlined in this article were performed under controlled settings and should never be replicated.

A Promise Kept

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
”Please reopen the case! My daughters have been hurting for too long,” Chung Mi-Suk collapsed to her knees and clasped her hands together in a relentless, heart-wrenching plea that twisted the onlookers’ stomachs with guilt. “Please! My daughters are hurting! Please help me put them to rest!”

The milling police station was on pause, watching the tragic spectacle of a mother pleading on behalf of her deceased daughters to the police. But no one could quench the fire burning within the poor woman, for the sexual assault case had long since been written off by the attorney in charge, and two decades had gone by in a heartbeat. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but watch. And as Mi-Suk realised that her prayers would fall on deaf ears today as well, as they had done so for the past decade, she staggered back up on her feet and exited the station.

The rain poured down ruthlessly and drenched everything in ice-cold water. She lifted her shoulders and chafed her arms from the cold yet did not try to flee from the rain or seek shelter somewhere where it couldn’t reach her. Instead, she stood her ground at the steps of the police station and watched the world go by before her in a rapid sequence. In those fleeting moments, while watching the common people go about their routine, she broke down and wept from the helplessness.

The evidence she so carefully collected over the years and put on pen to paper, an entire dossier with files upon files, now lay on the wet ground, the paper crumbling and eventually melting away like the seething fire in her heart consuming her resolve.

She was dying. A whole lifetime had come and gone in the blink of an eye, and before she realised it, she had become a mother, a widow, and now just an old lady whose only purpose was to seek justice for the twin daughters she raised so tenderly, whom she shielded from this cruel world, only to see them melt away just like how these papers now faded to the cadence of the heavy rain.

“Hey, ahjumma, you okay?”

She didn’t answer; instead, she looked on without moving as two young men rummaged through her pockets and ran away with the few coins she had, leaving behind her purse and an old photograph of her family before the tragedy took place and everything fell apart. With shaking hands, she picked up the photograph and smiled, wiping away her tears.

“I won’t leave this world until they’ve all paid. Umma, promised you, remember? Even if I have to keep on living and cheat death, I won’t break my promise to you, so sleep tight, my angels. Umma will soon join you and your appa. I promise.”

Rising back up on her feet, she trudged through the crowd of people from all walks of life as they fled the pouring rain, their movements in the background a blur of motion and their presence almost negligible.

The only thing Mi-Suk could see, the only thing that arrested her, was the large LED display with an award-winning movie director and his up-and-coming press conference and subsequent movie premiere for his newest blockbuster. And when she finally was close enough to it, staring up with hollow and detached eyes, her tears blended in with the salty rain and something in her expression changed – one that gave away nothing yet told a chilling story all at the same time.

Then, like the undead, she dragged her feet through the bustling capital, towards the studio where the press conference would be taking place later that night. She saw or heard nothing but the angelic voices of her beloved daughters, the way they called her umma, and those blissful days back in time when this cruel world did not blacken their purity and fill them with hatred and shame.

One and a half hours; the press conference was only one and a half hours away now.

Her eldest said the director was always the last one to arrive on time, that he would let all the filming crew and staff wait for him on purpose to relish in his ego. Such people never changed, only became worse over time. Their ego was so high, their sense of reality so low, yet they actually dared to believe themselves as nothing more than the filth they were, for they had become so used to tramping on and deriding those unable to fight back that they thought they were invincible, that they could stave off justice by paying those willing to accept the money thrown at them like the barking bitches they were.

And perhaps, they were right to think so, now that she thought it through, from where she lay in wait at the underground parking lot of the studio with a metal pipe tightly in her bony, wrinkled hand. Perhaps they were indeed right to think so….

Half an hour passed. Then, gradually, forty and fifty minutes. No one showed up in the parking lot, not even other people. Eventually, she decided to wait the entire length of the conference, approximately two hours or slightly more than that. She spent those hours just waiting and doing nothing else, counting the seconds, getting lost in thoughts and old memories, then restarting from the beginning on a never-ending loop.

At around 10 pm., things started to shift, and the solitude and harrowing memories gave way to other kinds of thoughts, the kinds that only a grieving mother could tolerate without losing her sanity along the way. She followed each person, tracing their movements, while keeping an eye out for the one she was looking for. But even as the minutes ticked away, the director remained elusive. Had he not come to his own press conference? But then she recalled the LED display she saw earlier tonight and knew that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps this wasn’t the parking lot used by the people who attended the conference?

Feeling the pressure of time, Mi-Suk hid the pipe in her bag, her youngest gifted her with her first pay through sweat, blood, and tears – and as she learnt after her passing – with her body.

She started for the stairwell leading to the lobby.

The entire place was filled to the brim with newspeople, overly zealous fans with no regard for their own or other people’s safety, and the few celebrities who were now standing at the centre of the red carpet posing for the paparazzi. Overwhelmed by the blinding lights and recurrent shutter of the cameras in the background, she noticed a young woman screaming her head off a few feet away and quickly made her way through the crowd, showing each one of them aside, and then grabbed hold of her.

“Director. Where is he?”

The young woman cast her a side-long look, judging and eyeing her down, before replying with a hoarse voice. “Director Kim? He’s still backstage, I guess. Why, are you a fan or something—”

Mi-Suk grabbed both of her hands—“Thank you, thank you!”—and slipped past security unnoticed, perhaps due to her old frame and those seventy years of agony that had hunched her back, turned her hair grey, and made her lose her teeth prematurely. After all, what harm could a seventy-year-old pose to anybody?

Only if they knew… only if they knew the fire burning inside her, the one that flared now and then, and ate through the deepest chamber of her heart, body, and soul like she’d entered the inferno even before shutting her eyes shut to this wicked, corrupted world.

Navigating the backstage was harder than she thought it would be. She passed by an entire corridor lined with doors for the third time by the time she heard what she could only describe as the sound of a muffled scream. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of a door with no label on it and perked her ears. She’d gone deaf once due to a vascular issue in her right ear, way before she lost her daughters so untimely, but had managed to get it back after treatment. She still had issues with that ear, but despite her hearing loss, those screams were so loud that she, for a few seconds, was stunned into silence.

Yet, as she looked around the corridor and the passersby, she noticed that no one even cast her a glance or inquired about the screams coming through all the louder with each passing second. She thus grabbed a crew member talking loudly over the phone, trying to bring his attention to the strange sounds.

“Young man, listen. You must call security!”

The young man tried to shake her off. “Ahjumma, how did you get in here? Huh?”

“Someone asks for help, in there, listen,” she tried, pulling the crew member closer to the unlabelled door. “I’m not lying. Listen! You must hurry and call—”

“Shibal!” The young man pushed her away so hard she hurled towards the walls, hitting her head. Gliding a hand through his sleek hair, staring her down with an annoyed look, he crept closer with a look that gave away that he indeed heard something but pretended not to.

“Hey, ahjumma, I don’t hear a damn thing, so stop the crazy act and leave before I call security. Do you hear me? Hey, I’m asking if you heard me? Shibal! Bitch, I said—”

“Always the same thing. It never stops. It never does. Why? Why doesn’t it ever—”

“Huh? What’d you just say? Never—what? You cursed me or something? Fucking bitch—”

Mi-Suk reached for the metal pipe in her bag. She didn’t hesitate, not even as the young man lay in a pool of his own blood, begging for mercy. Instead, she repeated her words, just as he told her to do moments ago, and kept bludgeoning his face until he stopped begging for his wretched existence and lay motionless on the linoleum floor. She then left his body to bleed and turned her attention to the unlabelled door, the pipe dragging at her side, as she twisted the knob.

A young woman lay naked, drugged, on the lap of the director whose wasted life she’d come to take. The filthy perpetrator stood up as he noticed her at the door, pulling up his trousers. She locked the door before anybody could intervene and save the director’s life.

Then… she took one step at a time. Slow and steady. Seeing nothing but darkness before her, hearing nothing but her angels’ voices in her ears, feeling no other emotion but that of a grieving mother who had gone without getting justice for far too many years.

“You want money? I’ll pay you! I’ll give you my entire fortune! I’ll do anything!”

Mi-Suk couldn’t help the smirk playing on her lips. “Then tell me, Director Kim, can you return my daughters to me? Let me see them one final time so I can ask for forgiveness?”

“…What? Daughters? Hey, ahjumma, you,” he pointed at his head, mocking her sanity, “you’ve lost a screw or something?”

“When I kill you, the world will know, finally, the monster you are… the things you’ve done… those horrible, horrible things you’ve done to such pure souls, who wanted nothing but recognition for their hard work, to repay their parents with their first pay, to give back to the world…”

“Huh? What’s this about? I’ve done nothing! Yah, ahjumma, you think I’m the only one who does things like that?” He paused, his eyes darting from the pipe in her hand and the young woman now getting back her senses. “Besides, you think fame at a young age comes at no cost? We all pay the price, in our ways, and bitches like this with their bodies. What’s so bad about it, huh? Nothing’s for free in this world, shouldn’t someone of your age know that the best?”

“That pay!” she snapped, her eyes turning wild with the anger festering beneath the surface, “has cost two precious lives! Tell me, Director, what kind of price tag requires forty counts of rape, derision, and sexual abuse by several men, of whom the majority are married and have kids of their own!?”

“This is just the way of the world! You think killing me will stop the system?”

“Then I’ll break the system, too, until none of it remains, if doing so I must until the very second I cease to exist! For killing people like you… it is not justice. It’s an obligation.”

The door behind them flung open as security entered. By then, however, the director had already succumbed to his injuries. They found Mi-Suk cradling the young woman, wiping away her tears and lulling her into comfort; her face and clothes covered in crimson, and her eyes wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. When she saw the security guards with their weapons aimed at her, she released the young woman and picked up the metal pipe on the table before her, advancing.

“Stop! Stop moving! Stop moving and put the pipe on the floor. NOW!”

But she didn’t stop, nor did she let the pipe fall. Instead, she let it down to the side, letting it drag on the floor, and then brushed past the security and the crowd of onlookers as she continued down the hallway aimlessly. Several people followed her, capturing her movements with their cameras and livestreaming. But the crowd didn’t stop her, not even as the security tried to step in. Instead, they became her live shields and blocked anybody trying to intervene.

She came to a halt at the centre of the red carpet, now directly facing the shutters, those blinding shutters that kept capturing her every single move and livestreaming. For a while, she just stood there and said nothing, not even as the crowd grew larger and the number of cameras only increased. Then she released her grip on the metal pipe, collapsing on her knees, addressing the nation and the police that failed her.

“I, Chung Mi-Suk, hereby plead guilty to the murder of Director Kim, the perpetrator in my daughters’ sexual assault case that was written off before the investigation could even begin. My daughters… my poor angels, when they heard of this, blamed by the authorities for being raped on several occasions by several men, including Director Kim, killed themselves before justice could be served. My husband died not long after, unable to live with the grief, and I tried decades – decades! – trying to make my voice be heard! Yet no one heard my pleas, bought for and paid with dirty money! So, what else could a mother do but kill her daughters’ abusers herself? To make sure they rested in peace, wherever they were, to finally be able to let go of the past, and say: “I did my best, the only thing I could, and kept my promise to you.” I do not ask for leniency but for my daughters’ case to reopen, as well as other similar cases the prosecutors wrote off in return for bribes and lavish gifts, or perhaps, buried secrets. I, Chung Mi-Suk, thus plead guilty to all charges against me…”

A delayed applause erupted through the crowd of people, of whom some couldn’t keep their tears in, while others, infuriated by the prosecutors’ failure to follow proper protocol and capture people like Director Kim, demanded justice and for all cases related to sexual assaults to reopen despite the statute of limitations.

While Mi-Suk never wanted this to be the case, spilling blood was her last resort, and she did not regret it. Not one single second of it. Even the inmates at the prison she was sent to broke out with cheers as she was escorted to her cell by two female guards, praising her strength as a mother and her unwavering love for the children she lost too soon and in such a short time, one after the other.

She died of old age only a few months short of spending a year in the prison, where she became the light of beacon for the inmates and the nation as a whole, recounting her twin daughters’ merry childhood as well as those harrowing years before the light in their eyes shut forever, bringing the whole court to break down and the prosecution to admit to their negligence and failure to follow proper protocol in front of the public, convicting those who deliberately took bribes and wrote off cases to hide their own skeletons in the cupboard.

But this was far from over. As with everything in this world, behind the scenes, new cases of exploitation and abuse occurred. Director Kim was right. There was no stopping the systematic abuse going on in plain sight; this was indeed the truth. But one thing was certain: every unpaid deed resurfaced and justice served sooner or later. No man was safe, and sometimes, all that was needed for that to happen, was someone like Mi-Suk who stared death in the eye with conviction and forced the world to open its eyes and see the ugliness behind purple-tinted glasses, even on the account of her own livelihood and health, for heroes needed neither fame nor comfort, only the will to force the system to reboot now and then.

Whether this deed was the unjustified murder of children, leaving them to rot from hunger, or the atrocities of barbarians with no empathy towards people other than their own, or the numerous world leaders watching a whole population burn yet choose to turn a blind eye like the cowards they were and would forever be as long as yet another innocent life was taken before it has a change to bloom like the flower they were meant to be – neither a terrorist nor a human animal living in open sewages…

 

 

 

 

 

The Taste of You

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

There’s something about the way skin tears that excites me; how it peels away as I put knife to flesh and bare the true face of its host. I can’t compare that feeling to any other, then again, have I ever felt this much and so many conflicting emotions at once before? To feel both mesmerised by Mother Nature’s composition, of what lies beneath the surface, made of several layers of tissue, to feel the edge of the knife gently unravel each layer, yet feel so… disgusted? So vulnerable? Beneath the skin, once it peels off and is gone, we’re all the same. Too similar, so uncannily similar.

I’ve always been an odd person. My obsession with the morbid, however, was not a result of this. You know those kinds of people, the ones who always seem kind and good-natured, yet are the most horrible beings? Only they’re good at hiding their true selves and fooling people into thinking the opposite. People always told me similar things growing up: “You’re such a kind person, so pure and innocent like falling snow.”

Just thinking of myself as “kind” and “pure” makes my skin crawl, especially since I know what I am.

I am a murderer. But not the kind you think of.

I don’t hate people, in fact, I’m not sure I’m capable of feeling anything. I just want to skin people, see what they look like beneath all that heavy, leathery tissue, to see their true forms and relish in the insight that only I have seen them, like really seen them. To stare into those hollow eyes once the skin is out of the way… how can I describe such a feeling? And the way that tissue feels on my skin as I place it over my face, and thinking for a moment, a fleeting moment, that we’re the same. Truly the same.

I like that part of the whole process more than anything, to put on my perfectly peeled mask and pretend I’m someone else. I’d wear the females’ clothes, craft wigs out of their beautiful, glossy hair, and put on some make-up. Then I’d dance the whole night, just dance away and pretend I’m the prettiest girl ever without being called a faggot or perverted loser.

Growing up in an all-boys school, I was used to being called all sorts of names and slurs, yet I didn’t mind any of them. I actually liked it; it made me feel like I was different, unique even. But I hated the idea of being told what to act like or look like. It wasn’t like I was overly feminine, either. Honestly, I received a lot of attention from females, especially in my twenties. They found my shyness cute, my awkwardness as some kind of mysterious attribution, and my effeminate features as a “pretty boy” trait.

Naturally, I chose a female as my first real murder. I’d killed animals before, practised on them to be more precise, and even murdered another human far too many times in my mind. Too many times, actually. And those vivid imaginations only made me even more eager to kill, to peel the skin off another human, and use it as my own.

Kayla was her name. Gorgeous thing. Despite looking so petite and feminine, she put up a real fight. I’d just taken off her bra and kissed her tenderly when I got the urge to taste her. Violently so. But not the kind of urge heterosexual males feel towards females; this was another kind of urge, one that was not sexual. I’ve never once felt sexual attraction to anyone or anything. Even this sudden urge lacked that sort of intimacy. I was just curious. What did this pretty thing look like beneath all those layers? Was she as pretty inside as she was outside? What did she taste like?

So, I pinned her down and punched her against the bed. She kept screaming. Kept telling me to stop. At one point, I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I couldn’t help it. Her soft, peaked breasts, the way her beautiful face distorted in horror, and the way she tried to push me away excited me in ways no words could describe. I guess I did feel some sort of sexual release back then, but it only happened that one time and only with her. I tried to replicate that feeling afterwards, always trying to mimic what I did to her with the others, but couldn’t.

Years later, I realised that I was in love with her, only I didn’t know it. I had never experienced love, and so I didn’t know how to express myself. I just wanted to be part of her and her to be part of me, and I was so sure that I only wanted to taste her, to see her real face beneath the skin, that I failed to recognise my own feelings. But at that point, I was too far gone to stop, too intoxicated by what Kayla had done to me and my perverted sexuality that all I wanted was to feel that way again in the most disturbing ways.

Sometimes, I’d wear her clothes and put on her face over mine, then I’d lie on the bed and slap myself repeatedly to relieve myself. It worked only half of the time, but I kept doing it. Over and over. Screaming, just like she did, then crying, begging myself to stop, saying “I’m sorry”, and then suffocating myself with her bra. It still smelled like the sweat of her soft breasts, which were now frozen solid in the freezer. I once cut up some of it to taste it, but they were so leathery that I just threw them away.

There are times when I look at her dismembered body and feel disgusted by myself, but other times I just use whatever I lay my hands on and try to relieve myself with her. But her hands are so cold that it never works. So, I stopped all that and just came to terms with the fact that I had to find some new hands – softer and warmer to the touch. No one would ever give me the sexual release Kayla gave me, I knew that, but I soon figured I just had to chop the head off and pretend those warm, cut-off hands were hers.

And so, my killing spree began in November of that same year I took this decision. Although I was still socially inadequate and it showed, I had managed to land a decent job at a chocolate factory, and women were still attracted to my pitiful personality, coupled with my above-average looks. There were days when I had two or three women over to my apartment, always of the same age as her, and took my time killing and dismembering them over the week. I didn’t like to rush things and was a perfectionist, and every new face and body required different tools and different care.

I liked especially the ones with some meat on them; that way, I could reserve some for supper and make soap with the fat. Did you know humans have yellow fat, by the way? I never knew until I chopped this middle-aged Somali woman. She’d given birth to six children and had fat in the right places. I must’ve used a great portion of her to make a whole course meal and several batches of fat. Which reminds me of something: she was the one who eventually helped me see my true potential and my innate talent for cooking and craftsmanship.

Long story short, I joined the cast of MasterChef – one of thousands and millions of home cooks, who were lucky enough to impress the judges and begin a new phase in life. Over the course of eighteen weeks, I became a fan favourite and earned the nickname “The Handsome Chef”, and when I came in second, I opened my own restaurant downtown and got people queuing for my dishes. My speciality? Sous vide turkey breast in vanilla and orange broth to enhance the sweet taste and give it a tang, served with a roux-based sauce made with a dash of cinnamon to double the effect of the vanilla without taking too much away from it.

You know, at first, I really wanted to start anew and make things the right way. But although I was making the bank, my urges were hitting an all-time low. Receiving attention from all those females, smelling their intoxicating sweat, seeing their soft and peaked breasts through their deep V-neck shirts, was getting to me. But, miraculously, I was holding on very well despite the temptation. Until a particular incident, that is.

As mentioned, I did not feel sexually attracted to anybody, and so I wasn’t particularly good at picking up the kind of sexual signals and tension people sent me. Not until it was too late. That was what happened on the evening of a party I was invited to by a celebrity couple who’d enjoyed my dishes. I was approached by many people, mind you, of all walks of life and sexes. But I didn’t really pay attention to anyone, in fact; I was actually planning on leaving the party early to keep myself in check, going as far as to avoid drinking altogether since years back.

But then he came. A young fella, no older than twenty. Good looking. He introduced himself as an up-and-coming actor and said that he was a big fan of mine. We exchanged phone numbers, and then I left. I didn’t realise just how big of a star this young man was, not until I looked up his name and noticed that he was a rising star in one of the most-watched coming-of-age, high school television series in recent years.

We kept in touch occasionally. I didn’t put any effort into trying to contact him as he wasn’t female and he wasn’t exactly what I liked to taste. Overall, not my type. But at some point, his messages overwhelmed me and would come at the most random of times. Each message started the same way: “Hey, I was wondering if you might be open to making some plans sometime soon?” or some variant of this. I usually ignored those kinds of messages, and honestly, I was slightly disturbed. That was a first for me – to feel disturbed by someone other than myself. And it was this fascination that eventually led me to accept his invites.

Of course, I knew what the guy wanted. I’d seen him give me those stares, the ones I’d given Kayla before I kissed her that night. But it wasn’t that I was sexually intrigued, only curious. The morbid kind of curiosity. I had never killed a male before. It never occurred to me that I could – or would. But lo and behold, as we made out in bed, I got that strange arousal I got with Kayla, and I just knew I had to take this opportunity.

He didn’t look much different from the others beneath the skin, to be honest. My expectations fell short. But he made me realise something about myself and those conflicting feelings of mine: it wasn’t the people themselves who aroused me, it was the fact that I did something I had never done before, something so perfectly disturbed, that it excited me.

I had to test this theory out, of course. So, I resumed my killing spree and used the flesh in my recipes. With each new dish, the sexual arousal was beyond anything I’d ever experienced, and when I received a two-star Michelin review from an acclaimed critic, I reached climax for the first time.

Today, I work as a judge in the newest season of MasterChef. Already past my sixties and my prime yet seeing those youthful faces look up to me and praise my craft triggers something deeply inside me. Had I the time and energy, especially the opportunity, I’d like to taste them and make a new dish out of them. Just imagining it makes me excited. But for now, all I can do is imagine and create the next best dish, imagining what each contestant would taste like in my mind.

I still wear Kayla’s face regularly and dance in the darkest hours of the night. She’s become some sort of comfort to me over the years. Her bra still smells of sweat, so salty yet delicious, that I sometimes scrape some of the fabric to infuse her sweaty breasts into my dishes. Serving it to customers gives me a kick, and once in a while, I reach climax – to her scent – and relive those beautiful moments of our bodies intertwining, her face over mine, her cold corpse against my skin, and me inside her rotting insides.